Candace Robb - The Nun's Tale

‘Are you well, my love?’ he asked.

Lucie smiled and patted her stomach. ‘We are both in good health. And better now you are home.’ She glanced behind him. ‘I expected your friends.’

‘They agreed to leave us in peace tonight.’

‘Tomorrow, then. They must come to supper. And now come within and wash away the road with Tom’s ale while you tell me of your travels.’

The abbey infirmary was clean and redolent of herbs. A fire burned in the hearth and a small brazier warmed the air near the patients’ cots. Brother Wulfstan was bent over Colin when Brother Henry opened the door to Thoresby. The archbishop put his finger to his lips, silencing Henry’s greeting.

Brother Wulfstan pried open Colin’s eyelids, brought a lit candle close to his eyes, moved it back. He called Henry over. ‘Watch closely.’ Once again the old monk moved the candle back and forth close to Colin’s eyes. ‘What do you see, Henry?’

‘The pupil still responds to light and dark.’

Wulfstan nodded. ‘That is good. He is yet with us.’ He sighed. ‘But only just.’ He set the candle down, dabbed Colin’s face with a cloth dipped in lavender water, and made the sign of the cross over him.

‘How does he?’ Thoresby asked, moving closer.

Wulfstan heaved himself up with Henry’s help. ‘Your Grace, I will do my best with him.’ His pale eyes looked sad. ‘But I must speak plain, we are close to losing him. It is difficult with such an injury. I can clean the flesh, apply cool compresses, but the injury is deep within. I cannot smell it, touch it, measure its extent. I can only make him comfortable and try to keep him with us until God calls him.’

‘I trust you to do everything possible, Brother Wulfstan. Whoever thought to bring my men here did me a good deed.’

Wulfstan acknowledged the compliment with a bow.

‘It was Alfred asked to be brought here, Your Grace,’ Brother Henry said. ‘He said Captain Archer has often spoken of Brother Wulfstan’s skill, and when he could not rouse his friend he knew he must come here.’

Thoresby knelt beside Colin, examined the bruised and swollen forehead, the blackened eyes, the crooked nose, dried blood in the nostrils. ‘He broke his nose?’

‘I think he fell forward, Your Grace,’ Alfred said from across the way. His voice quivered with weakness.

Thoresby signed a blessing over Colin and moved to Alfred’s bedside. ‘Tell me what you can, Alfred. Quietly. I can hear you.’

Alfred raised himself up on his elbows. Brother Henry hurried over and propped him up.

‘We approached the watcher. .’ Alfred described the man and the attack, pausing often to lick his split lip.

‘Can you guess how many attacked you?’ Thoresby asked. ‘Two? Ten?’

‘Half a dozen, I think, but it was dark. I could see nothing.’

‘Did they mean to kill you, do you think?’

Alfred shrugged. Henry helped him sip some wine, then dabbed Alfred’s split lip with salve. Suddenly Alfred sat up straighter, remembering something. ‘A dagger. I found a dagger under Colin. Brought it with me.’ He looked round.

Henry put a hand on Alfred’s shoulder. ‘It is over in the corner.’

Alfred lay back on the pillow. ‘’Tis the dagger of Colin’s attacker. I mean to find him.’

They both started as Colin gave a loud, shuddering sigh.

‘He goes deeper into sleep,’ Brother Wulfstan said with a worried shake of his head. ‘It does not bode well.’ He called Henry back over to Colin’s bed. ‘I want you to sit here and talk to him, Henry. Talk about anything. And every now and then, call to him, ask him to open his eyes, to wake up. I will send for a novice to take over in a while. I want to give him no peace. I want to wake him.’

Thoresby turned back to Alfred, whose eyes were closed, lips moving in prayer. ‘Sleep now, Alfred, and rest in the certainty that you did all you could for your partner. God be with you.’

Thoresby asked Wulfstan to see him to the door.

‘You have spoken with Dame Joanna?’

Brother Wulfstan nodded. ‘A most confused child.’

‘So you could make little sense of her speech?’

‘Sadly, no. Neither can Dame Isobel. But Mistress Wilton had some speech with her that sounded lucid.’

‘Mistress Wilton?’

Wulfstan nodded. ‘So much so that the Reverend Mother thought she might ask Mistress Wilton to help her talk to Joanna.’

‘An interesting idea.’

Wulfstan shook his head. ‘It is not Mistress Wilton’s responsibility.’

‘Mistress Wilton refused?’

‘I have not heard, Your Grace. But her father arrives in the city this week. And she is busy with the shop, Owen being away so often and Jasper here at the abbey’s choir school learning his letters.’

But Owen was back. Would he object? Thoresby must think how to finesse this. ‘Thank you, Brother Wulfstan. And I thank you and Brother Henry for your care of my men.’

Brother Wulfstan bowed. ‘God grant we may see them both recovered, Your Grace.’

‘ Benedicte , Brother Wulfstan.’

Joanna spun round again and again, looking for a way out of the stony wasteland. But the rock outcroppings rose high on all sides of the sandy spot in which she stood. Above her was a grey sky, featureless. No wind. No sound. Not even her spinning broke the silence. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came. The air was so heavy it seemed to suck her breath away when she opened her mouth. She clamped her hand over her mouth. Tried to breathe. Could not. She could not remember how to breathe. Or swallow. The walls began to close in on her. She clawed at her throat, trying to open it to the air. Trying to breathe.

‘Please, Dame Joanna, wake up. ’Tis but a nightmare you suffer. Please. You hurt yourself.’

Joanna gasped for breath. It came. She used it to scream. ‘Hugh! Hugh!’

‘Please, Dame Joanna, wake!’

All was darkness now. But there was sound and breath. A familiar voice. Joanna opened her eyes. It was the servant the Reverend Mother had sent to attend her, eyes round with terror. A scratch on the young woman’s arm bled slowly. Joanna looked down at her own hands, held down by the worried maid. Joanna’s fingernails were dark with blood. Something hurt. Burned. Her throat. She swallowed.

‘Are you awake now, Dame Joanna?’ the maid asked.

What was her name? ‘Mary?’ Joanna whispered.

‘Praise be to God! I thought you would never wake.’ Mary looked back over her shoulder. ‘She is awake, Reverend Mother.’

Joanna tried to move her hands. Mary let go, but stopped Joanna as she reached for the burning spot on her throat. ‘Let me clean it. You must not touch it. Let me clean you. Whatever were you fighting in your dream, Dame Joanna?’

Joanna closed her eyes. Hot tears spilled down her temples, into her hair. ‘The grave,’ she whispered. Would she ever be free of the dreams?

The Reverend Mother stepped forward, winced at the sight of the torn throat. ‘You are not in the grave, Joanna.’

Joanna began to tremble. She hugged herself, trying to still the trembling. ‘No one deserves to suffer the grave before Death’s sleep.’

‘You said you had risen from the dead,’ Isobel said, trying to soothe her.

Joanna shook her head, moaned at the pain, closed her eyes. ‘He should not have done it. No one should suffer the grave before Death’s sleep,’ she whispered.

Isobel bent closer. ‘What did you say?’

Joanna rocked her head from side to side, whimpering. ‘He pays. But so dearly. It is not right. To be put there alive. He did not deserve that.’

Isobel stepped back, crossed herself. ‘What do you know of Jaro’s death, Joanna? Who killed him? Who put him in that grave?’